Crape Myrtle, in training since 2010

I began making these photos as a form of relaxation, a reason to be near something beautiful and to take it in fully, without the usual time constraints I had grown accustomed to in my professional work.

The bonsai, themselves, seemed the very opposite of the subjects I usually photographed—they stood before me fully present, their sense of time measured in decades, even centuries.

From my first glimpse of the trees all those years ago, I knew implicitly that there was something to be learned from them, from their endurance and quiet dignity.